[Figment]

Originally Posted by Red Beard

Having said that I will take a shot.

Much appreciated. As you focused on the Abrahamic god, I'll do so as well, although my argument is more a macro-argument where yours is more of a micro-argument as it is focused on a single perspective, rather than the wider worldview.

I would argue that from a wider worldview, it is much harder to make it "have sense" than if you derive the logic from the excuses made within a particular frame of reference.

Anyway.

The breakdown is the presumption that you know God's intent and nature. He describes the Word as a small seed, which grows and expands many times over, eventually bearing fruit. The hearts of men are also figuratively desribed at the 'earth' of the 'field (world). It stands to reason then that an organic expansion would be expected.

The presumption here is derived from the claims of the faithful that wish to expand the religion so that all can revel in the glory of the god. in some faiths, competition between gods for the devotion of the humans is significant (for instance the Pantheon gods). So for both monotheists and polytheists, the same claim goes: the god(s) want(s) as many devotees as possible. Whether for personal ego-centrism of the god or for the supposed sake of the souls, that does not matter.

The god in question here is claimed to want all to know off said god and then make a choice. With the OT being a few thousand years old and well before the appearance of Jesus and even longer till an actual NT is composed, it can easily be argued and shown that the timing and placement is very poor. Although Christianity is one of the larger faiths today and argueably past its prime, it has not succeeded in reaching all corners of the earth (in time).

In the 6.000 years that Judeism and 2000 years that Christianity exists, it left millions of generations of people in the dark.

The methodology applied by a claimed omniscience, omnipotent and omnipresent god is flawed at best. To reach his goal and minimize suffering, it is eay to see in retrospect (which a timeless god can) would have been far better to use multiple independent "seeds", meaning that by the time the Spanish arrived in Peru or any other colonists in Africa or the far east, they'd have found mostly **** or Christians. Either way, a people that would not be considered third rate and thus not treated as such. Also hundreds of generations of people that could have been saved left "wasted" under the "yoke" of other religions.

This does not conform with other religious claims and even Christians realised quite soon that to branch out they either needed to conquer and commit genocide or use (forced) indoctrination, where missionaries of course are (flawed) seeds that any omnipotent god could have created/inspired anywhere on earth seperately, if they were present at all. It is however clear they were not present there prior to a missionary or other religious fellow being there and spreading a faith manually.

So again, the question is how come that other gods are free to establish themselves until someone comes in and manually overrides the self-coding of a person or people? If there is only one faith that's true, self-coding should at the very least be possible, even if unlikely. It is not however. Choosing "one chosen people" with an inconsistent, myth riddled, unevidenced faith is not just lazy, it's ineffective and self-centered.

Incidentally, so are humans.

Considering every faith is ineffective and self-centered, that suggests humans are at the core of the creation of faiths, rather than the other way around.

There's only one Biblcal God...so perceived differences in his identity/character are purely FROM local and contemporary cultural issues; which are distortions.

There are at least three Abrahamic gods though. Even within Christianity it varied: interpretations varied to the extend that the Cathars in southern France believed there to essentially be two biblical gods: the OT and NT god. "Their" god characters do differ significantly and all they do is quote the OT and NT. The inconsistencies are indeed pretty huge, one would expect a god that is literally cited in the Bible to "always be right" and "to be without change" to... well, not change and not make mistakes. Especially if they already know the outcome due to being timeless (yet the god does not as evidenced by linear time progression, this makes the god flawed and not live up to the claim at the very least).

I partially disagree on Sumerian influence. The sumerian influence manifests itself in Samritans, but **** did not historically associate themselves with them for this reason. Corruptions did start to occur; though the bible called it (and still does) baalim (many husbands...the Mosaic covenant is considered a metaphorical marriage covenant for example), thus maintaining a definable difference.

Actually I would say the influence occured well before they settled in the "holy land", as the Neolithical influences that are in the bible are also in other local, but not world wide religions. Sumerian influence may not be the best phrasing, overlap may be a better word. For instance the neolithical flood stories, including the Ark of Noah myth largely coincide (though interpretation varies) with Sumerian/Mesopotamian culture as the Epic of Gilgamesh, but also with Greek myth where Deucalion and Pyrrha are the two humans chosen to repopulate the earth by Zeus, rather than Noah by the Abrahamic god. Considering the biblical claim does not go that far back with an earth created only 6000 years ago, the Neolithical influence should hardly be there and if it was, it's impossible that it already was changed so much by the time the first scripture that completely different interpretations exist of such things as the great flood: at the very least Noah should be at the heart of every civilization since if the Bible is correct. It is not.

Furthermore, since the event itself, but not the outcome or interpretation, was shared so strong in the collective memories of these particular regional cultures and all others would have come from them, then it should have been equally strong or at least mentioned in other cultures said to have spawned from them. However, world floods are not even mentioned in many other religions or myths from other cultures, at all. They also do not agree on who did it, nor why.

This is an expression of one of the facets of his character; "God's power is perfected in weakness"

"And he said unto me, 'My grace is sufficient for you: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.' Most gladly therefore will I rather boast in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

To what end?

Essentially a mode for weeding out the proud and those who boast in their own power, rather than humbling themselves and learning from God (religious and secular alike); the means being crumbling their world views based upon the presuppositions that they began with.

That however, assumes you get the chance for your worldviews to even crumble by being exposed to an alternative. Many generations missed out on this chance due to the method of single source branching.

Or a Branch growing.

Let me say that the zombie comparison was a bit crude. Branching may be the most positive image you can evoke. Other variants are epidemic (contagion), oil spill, etc. But yes, the idea is the same: spreading from a specific source. The question is, why one source, why so late in history and how come that other religions thrived equally well if not far more succesful in the periods before?

The answer is spreading, like with any other religion, happened primarily through military power and political control, a purely human methodology.

True (lol), but there are many facets to the truth that all agree with each other. For example; I have a blue car; it has a red dashboard. Hopelessly dogmatic people who might try and say that this doesn't make the car blue any more...

In the strictest sense maybe not for the dogmatic. But that's a matter of definition, the car could not be denied to at least have blue in its colourscheme. That's different for the vast variety of religions: they don't share much in common, if anything and their cultural norms and values differ as greatly if not more.

Your example definitely goes for variety within a religion, but not for variety between religions, you see, those other cars have no blue in it at all.

Due to his confounding the wisdom of the wise, you should then realize that there will never be a universal religion until there are no more gentiles, which won't be happening for another thousand years or so. Having said that; the religion of man does serve a purpose in that you can't really conceptualize what Truth and light are very well until you know what lies and darkness are.

I have issues with a couple things here. First, the confounding of the wise. How come some wise are not confounded but told how "it is", while others have to make due? This seems to be inconsistent with its own intention and also very unfair. I'd even say it's insulting to other people, but that's beyond the scope of the point you try to make.

The existence of gentiles in the first place disagrees with the entire concept. Again, the exposure of gentiles is always human on human. Some humans are selected for random exposure to a god, but always within the same culture and preferably long before trustworthy accounting methods were established. Again, not a very good methodology.

I don't know what the original context of universal was, but God is Spirit; so proving his existence through physical things just doesn't work. The best way I have come up with for conveying this is; If you saw a brand new primary colour, and then went and told someone about it; how could you describe it to them?

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

First, the definition of universal is omnipresence. If a god is everywhere at the same time, it is as much a constant force of nature as gravity. It is, unchangeable, present and verifiable. If a random populace would cry out for signs of a god and they get a sign from Mars, Wodan, Shiva or Tammuz then this is not a sign from a christian god.

I'm disproving gods through the lack of spiritual consistency in the world (spirtuality being a local and not universal thing), an argument further strengthened by the physical evidence. Which, like with all those other spiritual interpretations, does not agree with one another. Therefore none of the faiths suggested, regardless of excuse theory, can be "the truth".

"Universal constants", given some variation, are things that are omnipresent on earth. The most omnipresent thing would be gods and their creation stories. These should not be able to pop up independent from one another and spawn wildly varying theories depending on location.


If you have a god that's a universal constant, your location should not matter if you are in search of a divine answer. In fact, the intend of the god (whether he choses you or not) should not matter, since any religion is able to interpret real world events as acts of god. That they can be interpreted differently at the very least means the god is not timeless, omnipotent and not omniscience:

He'd know how humans witnessing the event will end up interpreting it from a personal perspective. Hence there's no reason to do events in a way that's imperfect (leaves random survivors who are not intended to survive and mess up the whole intend of the event) if you know in advance this will be so.

The whole Noah flood example in that respect is just... Insane and pointless from both a mortal and divine point of view.

Shalom

Back to you.